Minnesota Man Gives $7,000 Reward To Kidnapped Girl He Helped Escape

posted by Shared.com -

5 months ago

On August 8, a family in Alexandria, Minnesota reported their 15-year-old daughter missing. A month after she vanished from her home, authorities reunited the teen with her family, but the entire situation proved to be very bizarre.

According to the authorities, a man found the girl running through a field in a nearby county and helped her call 911. Turns out, she had been kidnapped and held in captivity in a closet for several weeks by three men who physically and sexually assaulted her.

Apparently one of the men approached the girl outside of her home around 11 pm "on the pretense that he needed help with a situation," but when she went to offer him a hand, she was threatened with weapons and abducted.

She was taken to various locations over the weeks, before they finally settling at a foreclosed property in Grant County. Then, after being left alone "for the first time in 29 days," the teen decided to make a run for it. She tried seeking help from the nearby homes, but when that didn't work she swam across part of Thompson Lake in hopes of finding someone who could rescue her.

Thankfully, she stumbled upon a farmer named Earl Melchert, who came to her aid. Melchert called the police right away, and they were eventually led to the girl's captors.

“I could make out her face, and I went, ‘Oh my gosh, this is the gal from Alexandria that’s been gone for 29 days,’” Melchert told the New York Times. “It’d been on the news, it’d been online. It went national. It was on posters, in stores, her face, her picture. Right away, I recognized her.”

Last week, Melchert, who is being dubbed a hero, was given a monetary reward for his help in the case, but he chose to do something really special with it.